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Further Reading

In a first, Kickstarter has hired a journalist to look into how its largest-funded European project ever suddenly imploded.

Last month, Kickstarter said it was baffled as to how British drone startup Torquing Group raised £2.3 million ($3.4 million)—only to totally fall apart in less than a year. Kickstarter's announcement of its bewilderment came weeks after the startup's cofounder and CEO Ivan Reedman abruptly left the company, citing “personal health issues and irreconcilable differences.”

Ars visited the company's headquarters in western Wales in April 2015, months before they were supposed to be shipped, but did not get to see a working prototype.

In January 2015, Torquing Group concluded its Kickstarter campaign to fund production of its handheld Zano drone—the company raised its millions in just under two months.

In a Tuesday post on Medium, journalist Mark Harris wrote that he had been “commissioned by Kickstarter itself.”

The company wants to help the backers of this failed project get the information they are entitled to under their agreement with the project creator. They would like to uncover the story of Zano, from its inception to the present, and decided that the best way to do that was to hire a journalist. The primary audience for the story is the 12,000+ backers of the project, although I will also make the story publicly available once I’ve completed it, most likely in the middle of January.

Kickstarter has asked me to lay out the progress of the project, from start to finish; to discover what happened to the over £2m in funds pledged; and to answer the questions of whether Zano’s creators could have done anything differently, or made mistakes that future Kickstarter projects might avoid.

The Seattle-based British journalist who has previously written for The Guardian, The Economist, Wired UK, New Scientist and others, noted that Kickstarter is paying for his services upfront, a rare occurrence in the world of freelance journalism.

“We went looking for a good freelance tech writer with some investigative experience, and we found Mark,” David Gallagher, a Kickstarter spokesman, told Ars by e-mail.

Further Reading

"I will also be looking into Kickstarter’s role in the project and whether it could have served Zano’s creators or backers better throughout," Harris wrote. "Crucially, although Kickstarter is paying me (up front) to research and write this story and will be able to see it before it is sent to the backers or published, the company has no right to make any suggestions or changes to my copy. I have no other connection to the company, nor to anyone on the Zano team, and have no particular axe to grind."

One backer, posting on a Zano-related Facebook group, wrote on Tuesday that he applauded the move. "Well it is nice to see something getting done," Sean Rowland wrote. "At least it's being looked into and not being swept under the rug."

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar